The doors are open but the work goes on…

St John Simpson, Exhibition Curator

Many people think that once an exhibition is open then the work of the curatorial team is finished. Far from it! The space needs regular checking as thousands of visitors flock to see the objects. There is continuing press interest and therefore interviews, special visits, public enquiries and ongoing evaluation of how the public react to the exhibition itself.

There is also the events programme to think about. This has been planned well in advance and ranges from curator introductions lectures to gallery talks and special events. Most are free and the first curator’s introduction attracted almost 400 people although sadly this meant we had to turn some away as our largest lecture theatre only seats 320.

On the weekend of 12-13 March we held a conference aimed at specialists and public alike, which focused on some of the periods represented in the exhibition and involved 18 papers by speakers from museums, universities and other organisations in Afghanistan, the UK, France, Italy, Norway and America.

However, the aim was more than simply to hold a conference on ancient Afghanistan which would be aimed at a very narrow group of specialists. The aim instead was to involve colleagues who are not only working on material from within Afghanistan itself but also directly related sites or material from neighbouring regions.

In short, in order to appreciate Afghanistan you have to look at its physical and cultural relationship with other regions, and at times this means more than just the immediate neighbours.

The order of papers was carefully choreographed so that each complemented the other and gradually rippled out geographically so that ancient Afghanistan was tied into neighbouring Parthia, the steppe connections evidenced by the Tillya Tepe finds, the Indian connections of the Kushan court and the Indian Ocean world of trade by which the Roman luxuries found at Begram were brought by sea from Egypt.

The conference ended with papers outlining recent developments and finds in Afghanistan. Two colleagues from the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul showed how it was being restored and some of the numismatic finds from rescue excavations of Buddhist monasteries in the copper-rich valley of Mes Aynak in Logar province.

A very distinctive type of stamp-decorated and red-slipped pottery previously known from sites such as Begram (Period III) and Tapa Sardar has also been found here. Despite these sites having been looted in the recent past, the state of preservation is striking: wall-paintings, a polychrome-painted Gandharan sculpture and a unique wooden carving of Buddha were among the latest archaeological finds to be shown in two separate papers on new excavations there and at Tapa Zargaran (Balkh) by M. Nicolas Engel, the deputy director of the French archaeological mission to Afghanistan.

Some of the Mes Aynak finds have already gone on display in Kabul, timed to coincide with the announcement that the American and Afghan governments are pledging eight million dollars to the construction of a new annexe to the museum.

The conference was a great success and proof, if proof was needed, that context is everything and that to fully appreciate the stunning objects in the exhibition one must look again at how or where they were made and brought into the country.